Related Pages: Community, Charitable & NGOs, Recycling & Reusing, Brita filter recycling
Take Back The Filter
www.takebackthefilter.org
Description: Urge Clorox to take responsibility for the millions of Brita cartridges disposed of each year!
Category:
Community, Charitable & NGOs, Recycling & Reusing
Keywords:
Brita filter recycling, water filter catridges, campaign
Reviews of Take Back The Filter
Re-Fill Your Brita Filter
I just found this DIY project on Instructables.com - it is an easy, cheap way to re-fill your current Brita filters! He goes through all the science and then gives super simple step by step instructions on how to do it. No more toxic Brita filters laying around! Check out this link for more:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-refill-a-disposable-Brita-brand-water-pit/?ALLSTEPS
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It's all about Extended Producer Responsibility
The original Brita company in Germany has had a take-back recycling program in place for its filter cartridges since 1992. Currently, there are collection bins placed in stores where Brita is sold. Customers return their used filters to the store, from which they are shipped to Brita for COMPLETE recycling. Brita not only recycles the plastic housing, but also cleans and reuses the activated carbon as well as the ion exchange resin, the filtration component that removes heavy metals.
Clorox says they cannot recycle the filters because of the inside filtration material. That is simply untrue. If it can be done in Europe, it can be done in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
If you believe that companies have a responsibility for the entire life cycle of the products they manufacture, then please sign the petition at www.takebackthefilter.org, write a letter to Clorox, and send in your used filters, which are being collected for a direct action at Clorox. There is an address on the web site for sending your used filters as well as a Yahoo! Group for meeting others and coordinating filter collection. In the Bay Area, the Ecology Center has a drop off container for used filters as well.
The Take Back The Filter campaign is an important first step in letting companies know that they can't simply call themselves green (as Clorox is currently doing) without considering the full impact of their products. It's easy for Clorox to urge everyone to give up bottled water and switch to filtered Brita water. Yes, this will save billions of plastic water bottles. But what about the millions of plastic Brita filters that continue to be landfilled or incinerated all across North America? Unless Clorox is willing to address that issue, they are merely "greenwashing" their current products without taking steps to ensure that they are actually sustainable. Please help us urge Clorox to do better!
Beth T.'s keywords: Brita, recycle, recycle Brita, water filter, Clorox, landfill, Take Back The Filter
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Take Back the Filter!
For years, I used Brita water filtration systems to get the chlorine out of my tap water -- it was convenient and easy to use but I could never figure out what to do about the filters. So, I stopped using Brita entirely.
Brita has the #1 market share of pour-through filter cartridges in the U.S. and Canada. It's the #1 faucet-mount filter in Canada and the #2 faucet-mount filter in the U.S.
While the original Brita company in Europe has an end-of-lifecycle return program for the filters (as many European companies do for their products), there is no such program in the US.
In its FilterForGood campaign, Clorox promotes the use of its Brita filtration system, in combination with re-usable water bottles, as a means to reduce disposable plastic bottle waste.
Local green blogger and SustainLane contributor Beth Terry (www.fakeplasticfish.com) has started a campaign to get the parent company of Brita in the US, Clorox, Clorox to go further and take responsibility for the millions of plastic filter cartridges that are also landfilled or incinerated each year.
In addition to letters and meetings with Clorox, Beth promoted The "Take Back the Filter" by dressing up as a Brita Filter and participating in the San Francisco Bay to Breakers!
Please - send a message to Clorox - there's no good reason that the Brita cartridges should continue to be disposable. They can be made reusable and recyclable like other existing systems. Please explore the www.takebackthefilter.com website and learn more about this issue.
Sign the petition here http://www.gopetition.com/online/18444.html
Jenn A.'s keywords: fakeplasticfish, brita, take back the filter, waste, landfil, water filtration, clorox, recycling
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